In this video Stephen Kesting (www.grapplearts.com) does a great job explaining both gi and no gi methods so you don’t have to pull guard. We at Synergy Martial Arts discourage our students from pulling guard, we want our students to end up in top positions because of our emphasis on self-defense matieral.
I know many people feel that guard is a superior positon for the person that pulls guard, but that statement is usually made by someone who grapples with opponenets who are in the same weight class and on mats. I know from personal experience that pulling guard on concrete is not the best idea for your skin.
While I was training in California with Paul Vunak he had me grapple from our knees in his driveway against a guy who was much larger than me. Due to our size difference I did pull guard and used a scissor sweep gain knee mount. When were done I saw the results of the guard pull, my knees were scraped up and my partners elbows were scraped all from about 60 seconds of controled grappling.
While some of the scissors sweeps in here may result in the same if you used them on the street they do not allow for your opponent to use his weight to press on you like in a traditional guard pull.
Today I was looking for some good videos on actual street fights and I ran across this video of actor/martial artist Michael Jai White talking about non-telegraphic motion with Kimbo Slice on the set of a movie.
Now I can hear you saying ” Shawn you must be out of your mind??? Michael Jai White and Kimbo Slice???” But Michael Jai White does a fantastic job of explaining and showing non-telegraphic motion to Kimbo.
I can hear all of you Kimbo Slice critics out there muttering under your breath that Kimbo is a bum etc. Before you judge him realize that he was recruited by the University of Miami to play college football. I really believe that if Kimbo had started MMA 10 years ago he and developed a good game he could have been an amazing MMA fighter.
As for Michael Jai White I knew that he had been training Martial Arts for a long time and had train with some very good Instructors but really have not seen or heard him speak on Martial Arts ever. This is one of the better explanations that I have heard and I have much respect for him and his ability now.
Quite often when people come to train with us for the first time they ask how much sparring we do. When I tell them that we don’t do a lot of sparring to begin with they are often surprised. Before I go on let me state that our goal at Synergy Martial Arts is not to make a stable of high level MMA fighters but to make well-rounded Martial Artists
While I believe that sparring plays a very important role in the developement of a Martial Artist, in my experience sparring can also be very detrimental to a Martial Artists developement. If students are a different skill levels and the higher skilled student takes liberties it can lead to very bad habits.
I believe that mitt holding is a perfect answer to sparring for learning strategies and improving students skill levels and confidence. I believe that Ajarn Chai is one of the best pad holders out there because when he holds for you it feels like sparring but it comes with instruction on how to improve.
Watch this video and evaluate if your mitt holding looks like this. If it does not please give me a call so we can discuss how to bring your mitt holding up to speed.
As I was going through some material written by Sijo Bruce Lee I came across this one and it felt that it was a good fit for today.
In Jeet Kune Do, it’s not how much you have learned, but how much you have absorbed from what you have learned. It is not how much fixed knowledge you can accumulate, but what you can apply livingly that counts.‘Being’ is more valued than ‘doing’.
I find that this is not only true for practitioners of Jeet Kune Do (JKD) but for Martial Artists in general. People debate that my jab is better than your kick, my double leg is better than your sprawl, my rubber guard is better than your guard escape… You get the idea.
One technique is not better than others, it’s the training method and then how it is applied that makes the difference. The mistake I often see people making is what we call technique collecting, looking for the next cool and exciting technique but failing to understand where and what the application is.
When a student technique collects they lack the depth of understanding that comes from learning training methods and then performing the repetitions that is needed to develop proper mechanics and the application for that technique under pressure.
An example of how we use this at Synergy Martial Arts is how we train trapping. We spend a little time with reference point trapping then we use the straight blast to get them used to the different reference points with progressive movement and resistance.
From there we look at punching combinations and angles with in those combinations that we can get the reference points again with progressive movement. We also look at trapping from clinching and grappling. All of this will be done with and without gloves on.
In closing we believe that researching training methods and then backing those training methods up with good solid technique and application produces students that not only have a depth of techniques but also understand the way that the technique should be applied.
This was posted by some of my friends on Facebook and it is why I love Martial Arts. Over the years I have trained and taught I have met many people who have many excuses as to why they don’t train, many of them being not enough time or physical limitations. I think that this video blows all of those excuses out of the water, because I can guarantee you that this students learning curve is much slower than all of us reading it but he persevered.
I would also like to congratulate his Instructors as well for giving someone a chance that many people would underestimate and want to turn away. Over the years I have found that the students that challenge me are the ones that make me a better Instructor. The amount of creativity that they had to do to improvise and adapt the techniques for him is awesome.
People ask me why I train and teach Martial Arts and this is the reason. Martial Arts provides people with a method of how to gain self-confidence and improve. When I was training group classes at my Sifu Dave Hatch’s I had a fellow student that had Cerebral Palsy, his work ethic and courage was so inspirational to me, it made me train harder. He would always try something and if he could not perform it he and Sifu Dave would work on how to modify the technique so that he would.
Before I step off my soapbox if you are making excuses for not exercising, training Martial Arts or whatever your goals are watch this video and ask yourself how much effort did this Martial Artist put into his training to get to this level.
Did you know that October is Domestic Violence Awareness month? Also did you know that in2007 in the state of Michiganthere were reported 73,927 domestic violence offenses? That to us at Synergy Martial Arts is a pretty frightening statistic!!!
Please join us in our efforts to defeat Domestic Violence. We have teamed up with the area shelter in Livingston County LACASA (www.lacasa.org) and all proceeds from the workshops will be donated to LACASA.
Kicking Domestic Violences Butt
When: October 16th, 2010
Times: 9-10am, 10-11am, 11-12pm
Where: Synergy Martial Arts, 8540 Hamburg Road Brighton Mi
Cost: $5 for 1 hour class all proceeds will be donated to LACASA
Please join us for this fundraising event it will be a lot of fun, goes to a good cause and who knows it could save the life of you or a loved one.
For more information please contact Shawn Kitzman @ 517-672-2386. Here is a video of some of the material that will be covered at the workshop.
In this video Sifu Paul Vunak (www.fighting.net) talks about fear, rage and the proper mindset to survive a violent attack. I trained with Paul from 2002-2009 and one of the biggest things that I took away from training with him was the proper mental mindset for Self-Defense. Paul is able to pass on his experience in many fights in a way that is so easy to understand that you almost feel foolish.
In this video he talks about Bruce Lee’s mindset in fights, the 3 places that you can get hit in a fight and how to control fear & rage if you are attacked.
We have a saying at Synergy Martial Arts that we borrowed from Ajarn Greg Nelson. “Train with your partner not on your partner.” In today’s world of Martial Arts and with the rise in popularity of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) being a good training partner is not really focused on. Which is really too bad because you are only as good as your training partner helps you to be.
I have been very fortunate to have good training partners in and out of Martial Arts. When I was Powerlifting I had two GREAT lifting partners in Jim Goodrich (Mr.G) and Jamie Caporosso (www.xxxpowerlifting.com). When Jamie and Mr.G were spotting me I knew that if I was not going to be able bench or squat the weight I had on the bar I was safe.
The same is true with a good training partner or classmate if your classmate is better than you are and they are constantly pounding you into submission, you will pick up some very bad habits. I am retraining a Martial Artist right now that had years of the above from one of their training partners.
I believe that if you are better than your training partner or classmate you should put yourself where you need work and go at 40% speed and power. When there is a huge gap in skill and experience in grappling we will start the student with less experience in cross body, top mount, north south etc.
Standing up spar with one or two techniques like jab and rear leg round kick or things that don’t really work together well like a side kick and a front hook while your classmate has their full arsenal. This will allow you to isolate the two techniques and understand them better.
Also even if you put yourself in a worse case scenario and you still dominate the drill if you are consistently successful with something try another position or technique that you need to work on. Help your fellow classmate out to telling them how and why you are being successful and what they can do about it this will help them and you in the long run because they will get wise to your tricks and you will have to develop new or more complex versions of them.
At Synergy Martial Arts we whole heartedly believe that the students teach each other we and as Instructors give them guidelines of how to perform the drills and techniques. The real improvement comes from them doing the drill with as many people as they can then and interacting with each other, each person that you work with holds little pieces of the puzzle.
So in closing be humble, help your fellow classmate by always putting yourself in the position of the beginner and remember that you are only as good as your training partner/classmate.
Many of you who are train with us @ Synergy Martial Arts know that on October 22nd 2010 I am getting married and in the process I am inheriting a son Gabe who is 4 years old. So here is a story about how I have applied my theory of researching solid training methods to teach.
A couple of weeks ago Gabe and I decided that we were going to take his training wheels off of his bike and teach him to ride his bike. Gabe has been riding his bike for the last couple of years and has pretty good balance and coordination so I felt that it would be easy for us to accomplish our goal of getting him to ride training wheel free.
My dad taught me to ride my bike like probably most of our parents by taking the training wheels off and holding onto the back of the bike seat as I rode letting go of the seat periodically as I got my sense of balance more. It worked for me and my dad though I don’t remember how long it took but eventually I got it.
As I did this with Gabe I had the feeling that we were getting nowhere fast, we spent 15 minutes and were not anywhere close to him riding on his own. As a matter of fact I felt that we were trying to break some habits that he had learned from having the training wheels on. So I did what I do whenever I want to research something I went to YouTube and looked for videos about teaching children to ride a bike without training wheels.
After a little searching I found this video and once I watched it I knew that this training method was going to be more useful butI was not prepared for how quickly that he was able to pick it up. Once we took his pedals off and had him coast down a slight hill it was on his fourth try that he was coasting on his own. We then put on his pedals and he was off and riding his bike. It took him about 4 days and a couple good falls to really get his confidence with his balance but now he is standing up to pedal up hills and letting go with one hand.
I will not use training wheels again as I believe that they are a faulty training method as they teach children bad habits. If you have young children and they still are using training wheels try this training method it will blow your mind how fast they will get better.
So once you watch this video think about riding learning to ride your bike and could this have made it easier? Once you do that think about your own training methods in your Martial Arts training, are there places where you could take the training wheels off?
SiJo Bruce Lee said. “It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.” I believe that this statement is true in life and in Martial Arts but it can mean different things to different people.
Often people will refer to this quote to bolster their stance on not adding to Jeet Kune Do and leaving it just like Sijo Bruce left it upon his passing. Or they will use this quote to defend only training one Martial Arts style. Here is my opinion on the quote.
When I began training in Martial Arts in 1992 I was training in a Karate style and after about 9 months of training I looked around the room and realized that while training was a lot of fun we were not doing what I saw in the fights at my high school. I found that to be very odd here we were “learning to defend ourselves” but not learning to defend against the most common attacks in my school. Unfortunately for me I also saw the politics of rank and how higher level belts would use their rank to intimidate lower ranks.
So I left my Karate classes and went searching for other options in 1994 I met a guy who was training Jeet Kune Do and I thought that I had found what I was looking for!!! Three Instructors and training in 10 different Martial Arts styles later I can say that I did and here is what I found to be true.
That regardless of the style everyone is still kicking, punching, throwing, grappling and submitting. They all have just slightly different delivery methods and in order to find the one that fits you best you really need to experience as much of that as you can. I know that sounds like I am talking about adding and not decreasing and hacking off the unessential but I am not.
I am talking about researching what fits you best and then from there using those frames of reference to understand the specific movement then refine the technique. I have learned things while training Silat that have improved my Grappling and things from Kali that have improved my footwork for my striking.
We at Synergy Martial Arts have found that instead of focusing on the technique we look at the training methods that make each art unique and from there implement them into our training. By performing the training methods until you cannot stand it and then repeating them more after that you begin to understand the application of the technique.
In closing we have found that adding more training methods that have similar concepts allows us to hack away the unessential while giving us a variety of ways to train techniques. If we try a training method and we feel that it does not fit we discard it and continue to reach until we find something that fits what we are looking for.
Posted by synergymartialarts 
Synergy Martial Art's Weblog 